Practice Areas: Investment Fraud Recovery
Identify what happened to your investment — and find the page written for exactly that situation.
“Every fraud has a shape. Naming yours is the first step toward recovering from it — and it costs you nothing to find out.”
— Mark A. Alexander, Founding Attorney
Mark Alexander represents defrauded investors nationwide, with a practice concentrated in oil and gas investment fraud — more than 210 investor representations since 2007 — alongside securities fraud, real estate investment fraud, and the complex commercial litigation those cases grow into. This page is built to do one job well: help you recognize which kind of fraud reached you, and route you to the in-depth page written for it. If your situation spans several categories — most real cases do — that is normal, and it is the Firm’s job to sort, not yours.
Oil and Gas Investment Fraud
The core of the practice, and the reason the Firm exists in its current form. Since 2007, Mark Alexander has concentrated on these cases — an education that began on the defense side, representing oil and gas companies and their control persons, and has continued through more than 210 investor representations. That concentration matters because oil and gas fraud hides inside industry complexity: reserve reports, joint interest billings, division orders, and well economics that promoters count on investors and generalist lawyers not reading fluently. Fraudulent oil and gas offerings take recognizable forms, and the Firm has litigated all of them:
- Ponzi schemes disguised as drilling programs — “production returns” paid from new investors’ money rather than the wellhead.
- Working interest fraud and overselling — fractional interests sold on misrepresented terms, or the same interests sold past one hundred percent.
- Phantom wells and nonexistent operations — interests in wells that are marginal, plugged, or were never drilled at all.
- Misrepresented geological and reserve data — projections no honest engineering supports, contradicted by public well records.
- Diversion of investor funds — money raised for drilling that went to promoters, other projects, or other investors.
- Undisclosed excessive sales commissions — fees consuming a third or more of the raise, buried where no investor would find them.
Each of the Firm’s in-depth oil and gas pages takes one slice of this territory:
- Oil and Gas Ponzi Schemes — recognizing, unwinding, and recovering from Ponzi-structured programs, including receivership and bankruptcy-trustee proceedings.
- Working Interest and Royalty Fraud — the industry’s most common retail scheme: fractional well and royalty interests sold on false terms.
- Oil and Gas Securities Fraud — claims under the Texas Securities Act and related law, including rescission for unregistered and fraudulent offerings.
- Texas Investment Fraud — representation where so many of these offerings originate: all over the State of Texas.
- How Investors Recover Money After Investment Fraud — the recovery process end to end: investigation, settlement or lawsuit, trial, judgment, and the collection process.
- Oil and Gas Fraud FAQs — direct answers to the questions defrauded investors ask most.
Not Sure Which Applies? Start From Your Situation
- “I’m being pitched right now and something feels off.” Read Warning Signs of Oil and Gas Investment Fraud — thirteen signs and a thirty-minute due-diligence check, built to be used before money moves.
- “My distribution checks stopped and the explanations started.” Start with Oil and Gas Ponzi Schemes — that pattern is the signature of a program paying returns from principal.
- “The well they described doesn’t match what I’m learning.” See Working Interest and Royalty Fraud — misrepresented wells, reserves, and costs are its territory.
- “I just realized the offering may never have been registered.” Go to Oil and Gas Securities Fraud — registration and licensing failures carry some of the strongest remedies, including rescission.
- “I think I’ve been defrauded and don’t know what to do first.” Read What to Do If You Suspect Oil and Gas Investment Fraud — the first steps that protect your claim, and the mistakes that destroy it.
- “I want to understand how these schemes actually work.” Read Exposing Oil and Gas Fraud — an insider’s anatomy of the con, from the pitch to the collapse.
Securities and Investment Fraud
Most fraudulent investment offerings — in energy and beyond — are securities under Texas and federal law, and securities law supplies the sharpest tools for recovering from them. The Firm evaluates and litigates claims involving unregistered securities offerings; material misrepresentations and omissions in the sale of investments; breach of fiduciary duty by those entrusted with investors’ money; and unsuitable investment recommendations. Remedies can include rescission — unwinding the transaction — and damages, with interest and attorney’s fees where the law provides them. If your loss came through an investment product of nearly any kind and a material lie sits anywhere in how it was sold, this practice area will likely reach it.
Real Estate Investment Fraud
Real estate schemes work the same con in different costume: syndications and development projects sold on misrepresented terms, escrow and development funds diverted to other uses, and “guaranteed” returns that were never anything but a sales line. These schemes often target the same sophisticated investors as oil and gas frauds — and frequently go through the same channels. The Firm pursues recovery for fraudulent property development schemes, misrepresented real estate syndications, diverted escrow and development funds, and false promises of guaranteed returns.
Complex Commercial Litigation
Fraud cases rarely stay in one lane. They can grow into contract disputes, partnership and fiduciary fights, and business torts — and Mark Alexander litigates all of them through his commercial litigation practice, covered in depth at commerciallitigationtexas.com. For clients, the point is practical: when your fraud case sprawls, your counsel already covers the ground it sprawls into.
How the Categories Interact: A Typical Case
Consider a composite drawn from the patterns the Firm sees constantly. An investor buys working interest units in a Texas drilling program after a persuasive phone campaign. The reserve projections turn out to be several times what comparable wells actually produce — misrepresented geological data. The interests were never registered, and the salesman was never licensed — securities violations carrying rescission remedies. The “production checks” that arrived the first-year trace to newer investors’ money — a Ponzi structure. And a third of the raise went to undisclosed commissions — diverted funds and concealed fees.
One investment; four categories; and each category contributes something different to the recovery: the securities claims their rescission remedy and fee-shifting, the fraud claims their exemplary-damages exposure, the Ponzi analysis its path to clawbacks and receivership assets. This is why the Firm pleads every viable claim rather than the most obvious one — and why an investor should never self-reject by deciding their situation “only” fits one box, or none.
What Every Practice Area Shares: The Remedies
Across all of these categories, the remedies come from the same toolbox, applied to the facts: rescission, which unwinds the transaction and returns what you paid; damages measured by the investment less any revenue received, plus interest and attorney’s fees where the law provides them; exemplary damages where the evidence supports them; and, where a scheme has collapsed into receivership or bankruptcy, a protected claim inside that proceeding — which generally runs a year or two as assets are marshaled and distributed. In every category, the analysis ends the same way it begins: with collectability. A claim is only as good as the assets behind it, and the Firm evaluates that question at the start of every engagement, not the end.
The Common Thread: How Every Case Is Approached
Whatever the category, the method does not change. Every case is built on documents — the offering tested against public records, regulatory files, and the money trail — and prepared, where the record allows, to be decided by the court on summary judgment. In Michael Oldenburg, et al. vs. Rock Wall Oil Company, et al., that preparation produced a $1.3 million judgment for the Firm’s clients without a trial; most cases resolve by a settlement, driven by the same preparation. And in every category, the assessment is candid from the first conversation: whether the facts suggest fraud, what remedies exist, whether the defendants have assets worth pursuing, and whether the claim makes economic sense.
No — that is the Firm’s job, and it is done at the initial consultation. Describe what happened and send your documents; the legal categories, and often several at once, fall out of the facts. The situation map above exists to help you read the right page first, not to make you your own lawyer.
Almost always. A typical oil and gas fraud case is simultaneously a securities case (the interests were unregistered securities), a common-law fraud case (the misrepresentations), and often a fiduciary or commercial dispute (the operator’s conduct). Pleading every viable claim matters, because different claims carry different remedies, limitations periods, and paths to the defendants’ assets.
If a material lie sits anywhere in how the investment was sold or managed, yes. The categories here are the most common shapes, not the only ones — and a short conversation will tell you whether the facts support a claim, whatever its label. If they don’t, you will hear that candidly, at no cost.
Nothing. The initial consultation is free and confidential, and it ends with a candid assessment — whether the facts suggest fraud, which practice areas and remedies apply, and whether pursuing the claim makes economic sense. If you engage the Firm, nearly all cases are handled on an hourly basis with a retainer; in rare cases a hybrid arrangement — a reduced hourly rate combined with a percentage of the recovery — may be available, with every arrangement set out in a written agreement before work begins.
The Firm is based in Dallas and represents clients throughout Texas and across the United States — more than 210 investor representations nationwide. Because so many fraudulent offerings are organized and sold from Texas, out-of-state investors regularly find their claims belong in Texas courts, which is exactly where the Firm practices.
Contact Mark A. Alexander, P.C.
We welcome the opportunity to discuss your legal issue.
Mark A. Alexander, P.C.
The Gild
8150 North Central Expressway, 10th Floor
Dallas, Texas 75206
Phone: (972) 544-6968
Fax: (972) 421-1500
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